Resident Evil: AfterLife. Chris, Claire & Alice VS Wesker. Fight Scene: editing assignment

Editing in films has been around for quite some time the earliest dating back to 1895 where the film was physically cut with scissors and then stuck back together. as time passed editing was evolved and advanced to create more computerized editing software and was made more publicly available to people so they could edit freely rather than before editing software was only used by a select few people.

This scene from Resident Evil: Afterlife featuring a fight of Chris, Claire and Alice VS Wesker features a series of different camera shots.

I refer quite a fair bit to the characters in the film so just so you don't get confused the characters from left to right go. Alice, Claire and Chris


And this is Wesker

Match cuts on action: a match cut on action is when an action that happens in a prior shot flows into the next shot to keep continuity. As can be seen in the scene (0:30- 0:33) when Wesker throws his glasses they fly through the air, and in the next shot Chris catches the glasses.

180 degree rule: this rule sets up an imaginary line in the scene that if crossed confuses the orientation of where the characters are in the scene. The rule may only be broken if the camera moves with the change. (0:40 - 0:47) where Chris shoots and tackles wesker. if Chris were to shoot and it were flipped to the other side breaking the 180 degree rule then it would completely confuse the audience as the bullet wouldn't match with the direction it was shot

Motivated editing: motivated editing is used to get the audience further involved in the story such as them expecting what the next shot will be. (1:07 - 1:10) Claire pulls out a knife whilst being held by Wesker so the audience would expect the next shot to be Claire stabbing Wesker with the knife.

Shot reverse shot: when a character looks at a character (Usually off screen) and then the character is shown looking back at the first character. (1:13) Wesker looks at Chris who is off screen, then in the next shot Chris is looking back at wesker.

Identification with characters

Point of view shot: These shots are from a characters point of view. It goes to a point of view shot once Chris fires bullets at Wesker (0:43 - 0:45) Showing the possible fear Chris may get since wesker just dodges the bullets like it is nothing and advances towards Chris.

Close ups: Close ups are shots in which it is very close to the face in order to show emotion. at around the beginning of the scene (0:21 - 0:24) the close up with Weskers eyes glowing an unnatural colour shows us that the character of Wesker is not truly human and that he will have some sort of power to show for it.

Reaction shots: this shot shows reactions to what happens to stuff that happens to the characters. referring to the part when wesker gets stabbed (1:07 - 1:12) Wesker merely slightly winces in pain at the knife going into his leg and pulls it out with a completely neutral expression this shows Weskers character

Storyline/pace/suspense:

Cutting to soundtrack:  is the technique where each cut is influenced by the style of music heard in the background as seen in the resident evil scene as the music starts to speed up the editing does too so the Editing rhythm follows to the music used as well.

Cutaways: a shot in which it goes to another shot to give information of something that was outside of the original shots camera view and it usually returns to the original shots view. In the resident evil scene a cutaway is used when Alice is saving Chris and Claire from the containment units. (3:20 - 3:32) Alice taps on the device and then it shows the shot of the unit coming up.

Cross cutting: cross cutting is the technique where two scenes are occurring at the same time in the films world and the scenes cut over each other until they combine into one scene. Cross cutting can be seen in the First clip (The resident evil one) (1:40 - 2:00) due to the cutting away between the scenes of Alice fighting the zombie dogs whilst Chris and Claire fight wesker and get thrown into the containment units. The two scenes then come together at the end with Chris and Claire killing wesker due to the shot Alice gives him from a shotgun

Jump-cut: A jump cut is when a cut is used and the characters move position. On the resident evil clip a jump cut is used at (0:32-0:34) Chris catches the glasses and then wesker appears immediately in front of them. Jump cuts are a good use on this particular character of wesker due to his superhuman speed due to infection with a prototype virus so the jump cuts make his speed more superhuman

editing rhythm: The editing rhythm is the speed at which cuts and edits take place on a film during action scenes, as can be seen in the resident evil clip after wesker throws his glasses at Chris (0:33) the editing starts to speed up by having several different shots stringed together to make a more believable fight scene as from (0:33 - 0:35) it has about 3 shots in the matter of 2 seconds whereas the first 20 seconds only has 4 cuts